Hello from Bates! Here is a preview of public events at the college in September 2010. Except as noted, these events are open to the public at no charge. (Where there is an admission fee, the cost for the general public appears first, followed by the cost for students and seniors.)

For a printable version: If you’re viewing this in the e-mail update, please click the headline above to go to the Events Schedule website. At the website, go to the bottom of the page and click “print”  (as in “print this page”) for the printable format.

For up-to-date events information throughout the month, see our Upcoming Events page. Questions or comments? Contact events editor Doug Hubley at this calendar@bates.edu.

Saturday, Sept. 4

Noon

Men’s and women’s cross country: Alumni meet.
Russell Street Field

Tuesday, Sept. 7

4:10pm

Convocation: In a one-time departure from the usual Wednesday event, Bates begins its 145th academic year with a Tuesday program including talks by Bates President Elaine Tuttle Hansen and by Professor of Religious Studies Marcus Bruce, whose Convocation address is titled A Shared Vocation.
Historic Quadrangle (rain site: Alumni Gymnasium)

Friday, Sept. 10

7pm

Lecture: Watson Fellowship recipient Sulochana Dissanayake ’09 describes her year of researching contemporary theater companies in South Africa and Indonesia. An information session about applying for the Watson follows.
Benjamin Mays Center

8pm

Contradance: Traditional New England folk dancing to the band Bustopher Jones. No experience needed; all dances taught and called. Beginners’ workshop at 7:30. Admission: $5. Sponsored by the Freewill Folk Society.
Chase Hall Lounge

8pm

Global Lens film: The international film series begins its Bates season with The Night of Truth (Burkina Faso, 2004; 100 min.) Admission: $5. For more information contact 207-786-6135 or this olinarts@bates.edu.
Olin Arts Center, Room 105

Saturday, Sept. 11

10:30am

Men’s and women’s cross country vs. Colby.
Pineland Farms, New Gloucester

8pm

Global Lens film: The Night of Truth (see Sept. 10).
Olin Arts Center, Room 105

Sunday, Sept. 12

Noon

Field hockey vs. Amherst.
Campus Avenue Field

Noon

Women’s soccer vs. Amherst.
Russell Street Field

5:30pm

Spiritual gathering: Protestant worship service featuring Bates’ gospel choir. The Rev. William Blaine-Wallace, multifaith chaplain, leads the service with faculty, staff and students participating. All are welcome. For more information call 207-786-8272.
Bates College Chapel

Tuesday, Sept. 14

12:30pm

Noonday Concert: Frank Glazer, pianist and Bates artist in residence, performs music by Haydn, Weber and Chopin. For more information contact 207-786-6135 or this olinarts@bates.edu.
Olin Arts Center Concert Hall

4:30pm

Men’s soccer vs. Maine-Farmington.
Russell Street Field

Wednesday, Sept. 15

6–9pm

Figure drawing sponsored by the Bates College Museum of Art. Artists should bring drawing board and supplies. Easels provided. Admission: $7 (free for Bates students).
Olin Arts Center, Room 259

7pm

Volleyball vs. Colby.
Alumni Gymnasium

Friday, Sept. 17

7pm

Lecture: Illuminating Dark Energy — A Staged Approach by Gregory Tarlé, professor of physics at the University of Michigan. Tarlé will discuss pending developments in research to determine the nature of the mysterious dark energy that dominates our universe and has caused its expansion to accelerate. Co-sponsored by the physics and astronomy department and the Southern Maine Chapter of Sigma Xi. For more information contact 207-786-6490.
Carnegie Science Building, Room 204

8pm

Global Lens film: The international film series presents Adrift (Vietnam, 2009; 110 min.). Admission: $5. For more information contact 207-786-6135 or this olinarts@bates.edu.
Olin Arts Center, Room 105

Saturday, Sept. 18

11am

Field hockey vs. Bowdoin.
Campus Avenue Field

11am

Women’s soccer vs. Bowdoin.
Russell Street Field

Noon

Men’s and women’s cross country vs. Bowdoin, Colby and Tufts.
Pineland Farms, New Gloucester

2pm

Men’s soccer vs. Bowdoin.
Russell Street Field

8pm

Global Lens film: Adrift (see Sept. 17).
Olin Arts Center, Room 105

Sunday, Sept. 19

5:30pm

Spiritual gathering: Protestant worship service (see Sept. 12).
Bates College Chapel

Tuesday, Sept. 21

12:30pm

Noonday Concert: Performer to be announced. For more information contact 207-786-6135 or this olinarts@bates.edu.
Olin Arts Center Concert Hall

4:30pm

Lecture: A talk on a topic TBA by Nancy Bauer, an associate professor of philosophy at Tufts University who explores the history of philosophy and philosophy’s role in everyday human life, especially in its intersections with gender and with film. Sponsored by the philosophy department.
Pettengill Hall, Keck Classroom (G52)

4:30pm

Men’s soccer vs. Plymouth State.
Russell Street Field

5pm

Field hockey vs. Husson.
Campus Avenue Field

Wednesday, Sept. 22

4:30pm

Women’s soccer vs. Wellesley.
Russell Street Field

6–9pm

Figure drawing sponsored by the Bates College Museum of Art (see Sept. 15).
Olin Arts Center, Room 259

Friday, Sept. 24

7:30pm

Concert: Musica Nuova, a Boston-based baroque ensemble, performs the program It’s Complicated. The program takes unrequited love for its theme, Italian music from the early 1600s for its substance and a Facebook relationship status for its name. Admission: $5, available at www.batestickets.com. Proceeds benefit the 2010 Dempsey Challenge. For more information contact 207-786-6135 or this olinarts@bates.edu.
Olin Arts Center Concert Hall

8pm

Global Lens film: The international film series presents Becloud (Mexico, 2007; 111 min.). Admission: $5. For more information contact 207-786-6135 or this olinarts@bates.edu.
Olin Arts Center, Room 105

Saturday, Sept. 25

8pm

Global Lens film: Becloud (see Sept. 24).
Olin Arts Center, Room 105

Sunday, Sept. 26

5:30pm

Spiritual gathering: Protestant worship service (see Sept. 12).
Bates College Chapel

Monday, Sept. 27

7:30pm

Reading: Marianne Boruch, author of six poetry collections and two books of essays about poetry, reads from her work. The Language Arts Live series of literary readings is sponsored by the English department, the Humanities Fund, the Learning Associates Program, the programs in American cultural studies and African American studies and the John Tagliabue Poetry Fund. For more information contact 207-786-6256 or 207-786-6326.
Chase Hall, Skelton Lounge

Tuesday, Sept. 28

12:30pm

Noonday Concert: History professor Atsuko Hirai, a soprano, performs songs of Richard Strauss. For more information contact 207-786-6135 or this olinarts@bates.edu.
Olin Arts Center Concert Hall

6pm

Volleyball vs. Maine Maritime.
Alumni Gymnasium

Wednesday, Sept. 29

6–9pm

Figure drawing sponsored by the Bates College Museum of Art (see Sept. 15).
Olin Arts Center, Room 259

Bates College Museum of Art

Museum hours: 10am–5pm Tuesday–Saturday

Through Sept. 25
Joseph Nicoletti: A Retrospective: Nicoletti, an important realist painter known for impeccable landscapes and still lifes as well as psychologically fraught self-portraits, is a senior member of the art and visual culture faculty at Bates. He has taught at Bates since 1981 and had work featured in numerous Bates exhibitions, but this is the museum’s first exhibition of a broad range of his work. Featured are paintings and drawings from the collections of the Bates museum, other museums and individuals, and the artist himself.

Recent Acquisitions: This exhibition celebrates the acquisition of artworks that have entered the collection during the last year as gifts or purchases. Featured are sculptures, paintings and prints by artists including Abe Ajay, David Driskell, William Manning, Hermann Nitsch, Frohawk Two Feathers, Charlie Hewitt, Bernard Langlais, William Pope L., Joel Shapiro, Kiki Smith and Andrea Sulzer. Organized with assistance from museum intern Emma Scott ’10.

Landscapes of Maine: Then and Now: Inviting contemplation of the evolution of Maine’s landscape and how artists approach it, this exhibit pairs paintings made from 1880 to 1905 by beloved Lewiston artist Delbert Dana Coombs with landscapes from the corresponding period 100 years later. Organized with assistance from museum interns Charlotte Widlein ’09 and Andrea Svigals ’10.

The ceremony beginning Bates’ 144th academic year on Sept. 9 took place on a choice afternoon, sunny and mild, and explored in depth the concept of choice — no small issue for 470 first-year students confronted with new freedom to make their own choices. (Students new to Bates also included one transfer, for a total of 471.)

“This is just the beginning of a long lifetime of making choices,” college President Elaine Tuttle Hansen said. Quoting Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling, she said, “It is our choices that show who we truly are, far more than our abilities.”

She pointed out to the new students that a traditional residential undergraduate college like Bates is an accommodating arena for learning to make good choices — affording “the time, the space and the resources to explore lots of options,” as well as some buffering against the consequences of bad decisions.

If our choices show who we truly are, Hansen suggested, the new students might aspire to become “liberated consumers.” In contrast to the rampant infantilized consumption described by political theorist Benjamin Barber in the book Consumed, Hansen depicted the liberated consumer as one “who does not think he is free of the necessity of consuming — she is maybe even someone who likes to shop — but does not succumb to the pressure to consume mindlessly.”

She continued, “As individuals, it’s necessary and quite seductive to be focused on our personal consumption and our private choices. But as a society we know we must somehow make better collective, public, social choices about what and how we consume.”

“Somehow,” but how? Hansen offered guidelines that would serve anyone well as rules for living: valuing complexity, participation, commitment, real human relationships and deep focus on the challenges at hand.

Hansen’s theme harmonized with the college’s efforts, intensified this decade, to come closer to environmental sustainability, exemplified by this summer’s charge to the new students to advocate for curtailing climate change. But Hansen ultimately steered back to an idea that could be as relevant to residential life as to global responsibility.

She brought up the famous psychology test called the Marshmallow Experiment, in which young children are given the choice of having one sweet treat right away or having two if they can wait a while for it.

Referencing an article about the experiment in the May 18 New Yorker, Hansen explained that kids who can wait tend to be more successful as adults than the immediate gratifiers. The same self-control that enables them to wait for the treat, it turns out, translates into myriad practices and habits that cultivate adult success.

Noting that disciplined decision-making is as important to institutions as to individuals, Hansen segued to the topic in store for the featured convocation speakers: brief updates on the latest phase of the collaborative Bates planning process that began two years ago.

Each speaker was involved with a team developing recommendations for the college in a particular area. Leslie Hill, associate professor of politics and special assistant to the president for diversity initiatives, spoke first. Her team developed recommendations for the college on the theme of Learning at Bates.

Reminding listeners that “learning is what Bates is all about,” Hill wove together imperatives to deepen Bates’ intellectual community; use its tangible and intellectual resources wisely; and embrace diversity as something that needs to be enhanced at Bates and something that will enhance Bates.

Bates’ commitment to excellence drives its commitment to diversity, Hill explained. Bates can’t attain excellence without embracing the disparate qualities and contributions of all who come here to teach and to learn. “As importantly,” Hill said, “preparing all students for leadership and service in a multicultural, rapidly changing, and highly competitive world is our job.”

Matthew Côté, associate professor of chemistry and associate dean of the faculty, summarized the findings of the Natural Sciences and Mathematics in the Liberal Arts team. Of the team’s 11 recommendations, he highlighted two: the prioritization of a new facility where math and the sciences could be taught under one roof, and the redoubling of efforts to secure funding for student-faculty research.

Côté also mentioned four pedagogical projects now under way as a result of the team’s work: an integrated math and science course sequence, an effort to broaden computing experience and resources throughout those disciplines, a grant-funded process (undertaken jointly with Bowdoin College) to explore the teaching of quantitative reasoning and a project to improve communication within the science and math division.

Kirk D. Read, associate professor of French, co-chaired the team investigating The Arts in the College and the Community. Read’s humorous and expansive talk used his own experiences in theater as an undergraduate to illustrate the value of the visual and performing arts in the liberal arts context.

The late-afternoon ceremony also included addresses by Dean of the Faculty Jill Reich; Daniel Gimbel ’10, president of the college’s student government; and William Blaine-Wallace, multifaith chaplain.

As Bates College prepares for the start of its 144th academic year, the college is asking its [intlink id="11697" type="post"]470 arriving first-year students[/intlink] to join together in researching and taking action on carbon emissions and climate change.

The students were given suggested [intlink id="11704" type="post"]summer reading[/intlink] that relates to climate change, and the annual orientation period will include a presentation by Franke James, an artist known for her environmental activism. In October, the first-years and other Bates students will take part in an international day of action advocating for real progress in curtailing climate change.

The college officially begins the academic year with the annual Convocation ceremony at 4:10 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 9, on the Historic Quad bounded by College Street and Campus Avenue. The rain site is the Alumni Gymnasium, Campus Avenue.

Speakers at the ceremony include Bates President Elaine Tuttle Hansen and faculty members who have worked on planning teams exploring three initiatives encouraged by Hansen. Discussing the teams’ strategic thinking over the past year are:

Leslie Hill, associate professor of politics and special assistant to the president, addressing the theme “Learning at Bates”;

Matthew Côté, associate professor of chemistry and associate dean of the faculty, “Natural Sciences and Mathematics in the Liberal Arts”; and Kirk D. Read, associate professor of French, “The Arts in the College and the Community.”

• [intlink id="11075" type="post"]Welcome, Class of 2013![/intlink]
• [intlink id="11704" type="post"]2009 reading list for entering students focuses on global climate change[/intlink]
• [intlink id="11697" type="post"]Meet the Class of 2013[/intlink]

Participants reviewed the college’s strengths and weaknesses, and explored external forces — such as the changing racial, geographical and socioeconomic characteristics of high school students — that are poised to affect liberal arts schools like Bates.

This comprehensive discussion eventually distilled the three themes that Hill, Côté and Read will review at convocation. The teams exploring the themes offered recommendations for planning and action to Hansen and the college trustees last spring for consideration.

It’s typical for the college’s dean of students office to engage first-years with a topical program, and “Changing the Climate Through Art and Action,” this year’s theme, will culminate later this fall in Bates’ participation in a worldwide day of action on Oct. 24.

The [intlink id="11704" type="post"]summer’s reading[/intlink] for new students included such notable books about climate change as With Speed and Violence: Why Scientists Fear Tipping Points in Climate Change by Fred Pearce; Climate Code Red: The Case for Emergency Action by David Spratt and Philip Sutton; and Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future by Bill McKibben.

The October day of action is organized by the international campaign 350.org (“350″ being the number of parts per million that scientists consider the safe upper limit for atmospheric carbon dioxide). The campaign asks participants to incorporate the number 350 “at an iconic place in their community.”

Coordinated by the offices of the dean of students and residential life, students organized by campus residence will collaborate with such campus departments as the Harward Center for Community Partnerships and the Environmental Coordinator’s office to develop action projects or artworks to present on or around the October day of action.

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Aug.27:
[intlink id="11697" type="post"]Meet the Class of 2013[/intlink]

Aug.27:
[intlink id="11704" type="post"]2009 reading list for entering students focuses on global climate change[/intlink]

This anonymous gift from a Bates alum — perhaps the first, and certainly the largest, of its kind to a U.S. college — builds on our strengths and recognizes the additional costs of certain sustainable practices. Before the gift, about 22 percent of our food already came from local farmers and vendors; now we are able to purchase about 28 percent from these sources. Up to 84 percent of the food we don’t use re-enters the food cycle: to a food bank, into compost or to a recycling center, or as “waste” to a local pig farmer to be consumed as food by another species. We have never outsourced our food operations, and for many years staff members have been strong supporters of our environmental and communal ethos.

The purpose of Bates Contemplates Food is to call attention to ongoing programs as well as special events that teach us to ask questions about food. Where does it come from? How is it sourced and prepared at Bates? What is our role in the larger food system in which we are all embedded? Why are sustainable, healthy food cultures so important and so endangered, and what is the relationship between how we eat and how we think? Seeking answers often means confronting how little we know about complex and confounding issues ranging from dependence on petroleum and diet-related diseases in the U.S. to threats like species extinction and global hunger. But by feeding body and mind together, we may learn to make better choices in the face of complexity.

In presenting Bates Contemplates Food to the College audience at Convocation this fall, I juxtaposed two stories, one fictional and one factual. The first story, about two meals the narrator eats on her visit to the fictional university of Oxbridge, is taken from the opening chapter of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, where Woolf introduces her argument about the relationship among money, space, and creative thought.

The luncheon meal at one of the men’s colleges is a glorious feast: “partridges…with all their retinue of sauces and salads” and “potatoes, thin as coins but not so hard….sprouts, foliated as rosebuds but more succulent.” Consumed slowly and satisfyingly, the sumptuous meal has the effect of lighting a “profound, subtle and subterranean glow which is the rich yellow flame of rational intercourse.”

The meager evening meal, by contrast, is taken at Fernham, the neighboring women’s college recently founded on a small endowment to promote the radical idea of higher education for women. This meal of stringy beef and prunes dampens the spirit, leaving Woolf toher unexceptionable conclusion: “One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”

The second story that I told at Convocation was about Bates dining itself. While the spirit of communal Bates dining has always been strong and willing — notwithstanding the historical reality that Bates women of my generation were the very first to be allowed to eat in the same dining hall with men — the physical space of Bates dining, Chase Hall’s Commons, grew less adequate to our dining needs over the years.

In planning to correct that situation, our architects initially advanced the au courant idea of “distributed dining” — multiple facilities spread around the campus, with food courts and fast-food franchises. To their surprise, Bates students promptly vetoed the idea and insisted on dining as a committee of the whole. True, they wanted a bigger and brighter and better Commons, but their ideas focused on a better space for one and all. And so we built a place where cooks and servers could excel in their work, and where students would be called to the table to eat nourishing food with good friends and great ideas.

Both the new Commons building and our sustainable dining practices are now more visibly than ever at the heart of our educational vision, reminding us that a liberal education prepares a whole human being for life. Today, in the high-speed, high-tech, competitive, and distracting world where we eat too much and too fast and too often alone, it’s critical to ensure that respectful and ethical human interaction is still at the core at Bates College.

By Elaine Tuttle Hansen

Orientation 2008

Orientation for the Class of 2012, held Aug. 25- Sept. 3, helped ease first-year students into Bates life by offering something for everyone: lugging belongings into residence halls, sailing the Maine Coast by big boat, visiting a wild and crazy student activities fair, and considering Bates classicist Margaret Imber’s metaphorical Convocation talk equating love with a liberal arts education. [More...]

Although the final numbers are subject to change, some 1,760 students are expected on campus this fall and 154 will be attending Bates-approved programs off campus. New to Bates are 525 first-year students and 20 transfer students, drawn from a record 5,098 applications.

Eighteen percent of the new arrivals are U.S. students from underrepresented minority groups, 6 percent are international students and 5 percent are citizens of both the United States and another country.

New students have residences in 34 states and represent 32 foreign countries, from Afghanistan to Vietnam. Almost half of the members of the entering class reside outside of New England. Eleven percent of the new arrivals, and 10 percent of all actively enrolled Bates students, are from Maine.

– Office of Communications and Media Relations

Celebrating its 154th academic year and the first day of classes, the Bates community will gather for Convocation at 4:10 p.m., Wednesday, Sept. 3, on the historic Quad near Campus Avenue.

Margaret A. Imber, associate professor of classical and medieval studies, will deliver the 2008 Convocation address.

Also speaking will be President Elaine Tuttle Hansen, who will update the College planning process that began last fall. In addition, Hansen will describe “Nourishing Mind and Body: Bates Contemplates Food,” the 2008-09 College-wide initiative focusing on food and food systems.

In “How Not to Fall in Love,” her address to the incoming Class of 2012, Imber will tell students how to achieve a great education by suggesting, tongue-in-cheek, ways they might not get a great education. The rhetorical device, focusing on the negative to highlight the affirmative, is called a via negativa.

Familiar in theology, it’s where “if you can’t explain how to do something, then you explain how not to do it,” explained Imber.

Employing such a rhetorical device is part of effective public speaking, “which is, I think, always better when dry wit runs through it.” said Imber. And tongue-in-cheek wit, she said, falls short of irony. “True irony requires a level of detachment from the human comedy. I’m more sentimental, I think. I’m capable of recognizing my own foibles.”

All wit and irony aside, Imber explained her Convocation “shtick”: “It’s about why you come to college: to fall in love with a problem, idea or poem. Something that engages your soul.” Her address, she said, will also respond in a manner to a recent essay in the Wall Street Journal by Charles Murray, co-author of the Bell Curve and the forthcoming book, Real Education, who suggests that a college education should focus on CPA-like certifications, not degrees.

During her address, Imber will disagree. A college education should result in “a door opening in your soul and your mind crossing the threshold,” she said.

Imber earned a B.A. in classics from the University of Chicago. After what she calls a “detour” — a law degree from the University of Michigan and a legal practice in California that included work as an assistant U.S. attorney — Imber earned a doctorate in classics from Stanford University.

A member of the Bates faculty since 1997, she studies the social history of Roman rhetoric and law and teaches courses in ancient rhetoric, Roman civilization and Athenian litigation, as well as Latin and Greek language courses.

– Office of Communications and Media Relations

Bates College opens its 153rd academic year with a convocation ceremony featuring John R. Cole, Thomas Hedley Reynolds Professor of History, at 4:10 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 5, on the historic Quad near Campus Avenue.

Cole, of New Gloucester, has served on the Bates faculty for 40 years and since 1992 has held the Reynolds professorship, named after a past president of the college. Cole’s talk is titled Dress Right, Stand Right, Play Right, Ride Right, Write Right . . .

Also speaking at the ceremony are Elaine Tuttle Hansen, president of Bates; William Jack, a senior who is president of the Bates College Student Government; and the Rev. William Blaine-Wallace, multifaith chaplain. For more information, please call 207-786-6255.

The subject of his convocation address “is parent-child exhortation at the point of children leaving the parental home on the threshold of independent lives as young adults,” explains Cole, himself a father of four. “I pay particular attention to one parent-child set, the Habsburg Empress Maria Theresa and her daughter, Marie Antoinette, sent off to France to marry the future Louis XVI.”

With a focus on the history of democratic ideas, Cole teaches courses about ancient Greece, France in the 17th and 18th centuries, and 18th-century English feminist Mary Wollstonecraft.

Cole’s publications include a 1995 biography of 17th-century French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal. Pascal: The Man and His Two Loves (New York University Press) examines Pascal’s scientific and religious insights in a way that reintegrates the seemingly disparate aspects of his life into a clear, coherent portrait.

Cole also wrote The Olympian Dream and Youthful Rebellion of Rene Descartes (University of Illinois Press, 1992), which analyzes a famous series of dreams the mathematician experienced. The resulting work is a systematic interpretation of their effect on Descartes’ later career.

Cole, who holds a Ph.D. from Harvard and a bachelor of arts degree from Haverford, is a staunch advocate for small, liberal-arts colleges and the close student-faculty connections they make possible.

“I learned much more and more happily at little Haverford than at great Harvard, and I have gone on to learn much more and more happily while teaching at Bates,” he says.

Convocation day at Bates, Sept. 5 also marks the start of classes. Although the final numbers are subject to change, some 1,660 students are expected on campus this fall and 193 will be attending Bates-sponsored programs off campus. New to Bates are 445 first-year students and 15 transfer students, drawn from a record 4,650 applications.

Seventeen percent of the new arrivals are U.S. students from underrepresented minority groups, 6 percent are international students and 4 percent are citizens of both the United States and another country. First-generation-to-college students make up 10 percent of the entering class.

New students have residences in 39 states and 30 foreign countries, from Bangladesh to Zimbabwe. Half of the members of the entering class reside outside of New England. Nine percent of the new arrivals, and 10 percent of all actively enrolled Bates students, are from Maine.

Kozol’s first book, “Death at An Early Age” (1967), established him as an angry and eloquent writer on behalf of children. Winner of the 1968 National Book Award in Science, Philosophy and Religion, the book describes Kozol’s experience as a teacher in a segregated fourth-grade classroom in Boston. Kozol continued to teach for the next 20 years, working at South Boston High School during the city’s desegregation crisis, in Arizona with children of farm workers and in Cleveland with illiterate adults.

Kozol published “Rachel and Her Children: Homeless Families in America” (1988) after spending much of winter 1985-86 living in a South Bronx, N.Y., homeless shelter and befriending its residents. Called “bitterly eloquent” by Newsweek and “a searing indictment of society” by the New York Times, “Rachel and Her Children” received the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award and The Conscience in Media Award of the American Society of Journalists and Authors.

Kozol’s most recent book, “Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation” (1995), has been called “beautiful and morally worthy” by Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison. Another Nobel Laureate, Elie Wiesel, wrote: “Jonathan’s struggle is noble. What he says must be heard. His outcry must shake our nation out of its guilty indifference.”

Born in Boston, Kozol graduated from Harvard University in 1958 and received a Rhodes Scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford University. He has held two Guggenheim Fellowships and twice has been a fellow of the Rockefeller Foundation.

A signature talk at Bates since 1975, the Andrews Lecture is a memorial to Bertha May Bell Andrews, who served on the Bates faculty from 1913 to 1917 and established the women’s physical education program at the college. The lectureship was established by her son, Dr. Carl B. Andrews of the Bates class of 1940.